I do not pretend to know anything about the potential of Apple TV. However, if Steve Jobs said he “cracked the code” for the interface, it must have a feature set that average person would not only find easy to use, but would actually want in a TV. I am going to present my take on what the “perfect” TV feature set would be. Read more
On occasion during development, I like to check how my .css and javascript functionality works in IE. Right now, IE only has about 25% of the total internet market for browsers (w3schools.com) for 2011; and it is slowly deteriorating. But I don’t want to disparage users for using inferior products, so I like to test against them. Besides, 25% of market share is not ALL bad.
I did some digging on Google and found a few helps, but nothing as specific as I wanted. So here I present how to get Parallels to server up MAMP pages from my OSX MacBook Pro. Read more
I had a real epiphany today. I suddenly realized that I am so busy doing work at work, I don’t have time for growth. I find that there is no room for judgment or creativity on my part. I am told what to do, how to do it, and the order to do it in. And the priorities may change from one day to the next. I am not allowed to provide input or innovation. It’s almost mechanical. The only thing I really get to decide is determining how long it’s going to take, but even that gets negotiated. To make matters worse, I get thrown the task of fixing other coders bugs. I feel like an extension of someone else. Like I am there to be the clone of someone who feels they need another body. They decide what needs to get done, how they want it done, whether or not it sounds too difficult, and how to implement: design, function, and format. In a word, micromanaged. Didn’t that go out of style with the 90′s?
How did I come to that realization? It has taken some time to realize, but it hit me full force today when I couldn’t even think outside the box for a simple reordering algorithm. I was given the opportunity for a brief moment and I froze! I have allowed myself to get to this point. It’s not from lack of effort however. I always put forth ideas, best practices, and user interaction improvements. The problem is, someone else has control and I always get overridden. I don’t even know if my ideas get passed on to the powers that be. I am not included in any discussion, asked what I think, or allowed to propose designs or functionality. Again, I am told what to do, every step of the way. Read more
Wow! I had the WORST customer service ever from Bert Murdock Music in Orem, Utah. I am still in shock about the whole thing. I thought these stories were always made up.
To bring you up to speed, I went to Bert Murdock Music in Orem to purchase some microphones. We want to do some recording with family members. We got the idea from storycorps.org. We thought it would be a great idea to interview family members. So I found a place to purchase microphones.
I purchases two microphones on Saturday, Sep. 11, 2010. My receipt says 1:59pm. I brought them home, hooked them up and played with them on GarageBand and my Mac through my 4 port m-audio fast track ultra over the weekend. They worked great and I was able to make a few recordings. Then the unthinkable… Read more
I had an interesting conversation with a colleague of mine today. You see, we are working with a company that is going to do some marketing for us. The issue we are facing is their IT guy is a Microsoft kool-aide drinker. He knows just enough to get himself in trouble, but couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. But we have to work through him to get any email sent. We are being blocked because he looks at the content we want to send and says, “There is not enough content, it will be marked as spam. We need more content.”
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but spam filtering does not necessarily only look at the quantity of the content, but the quality and specific words the contained within it. For example, spamassassin uses filtering that will check the content and apply a score based on multiple things like: relays, headers, subject line, dates, etc. So the first question I asked was, “How can this Microsoft loving IT guy eyeball the content and be able to tell it will be marked as spam?”
I have been thinking a lot lately about what it means to write code. What is a coder exactly? I have asked myself the question, “Why are there some companies who understand how to treat coders, and others who do not?”
MAMP is a great product. It makes using the MAMP stack on MAC very easy. I liked it so much I actually purchased MAMP Pro. Installing was a breeze, configuration is simple, and it is up and running in no time. However, for some reason, when I am trying to connect to MySQL from a CakePHP shell, the database connection cannot be found. Read more
Through the years, I have realized there are two types of web applications.
While there are certainly some hybrid combination’s of these classifications, all applications can be categorized into these two categories. For example PHPNuke. It’s a single login to a community. As a user, you can use all of the functionality in the application AND you can see other users, etc. While something like FaceBook for example is a Hybrid of community and single user. While you can allow other users to see your data and content, they cannot modify your data or settings. You own that and nobody else has access to it without your username and password.
So comes the question. How can I limit data to a specific user with CakePHP? I love the CakePHP framework. But I have never been able to get a straight answer from anyone on the proper “cakeish” way to limit data to a specific user. For example. Let’s say I want to build a check book balancing application. I want it to be available to multiple subscribers. While all subscribers have access to the same functionality, they do not all see or modify the same data. While their data should be limited, they may all have access to the same Bank. This means that any user should be able to see all the banks we currently support… for example.
I have searched the internet and posted to stackoverflow.com trying to find the answer to this question. It is apparent that I am not the only one trying to figure this out. Add in the potential complexity to provide ADMIN routing and what you potentially have is a complicated mess of code if it is not done properly.
Well, search no more my Internet Friends! I think I have figured out the mess. I have been able to use a combination of things I have learned from here and here. But ultimately, I had to build this with good old ingenuity and a lot of trial and error. Keep Reading! Read more
I started working on a project that requires a single login for multiple user types. Because of the way my mind organizes things, I was having difficulty getting my mind around multiple models pointing to the same table in the database. It just felt messy. But I found this to be the best solution. I can provide single user login and keep the user functionality separated.
In this case, I have managers and tenants both pointing to the users table. I simply add a ‘type’ column to the user table to track what type of user it is. Then in my callback methods on the models, I set the conditions for the beforeFind and the beforeSave within each model to it’s corresponding type. This keeps both the data it displays and the data it saves in check and accurate. Here is what my manager model looks like.
<?php
class Manager extends AppModel {
var $name = 'Manager';
var $useTable = 'users';
// only return users where type = Manager
function beforeFind($queryData) {
$queryData['conditions']['Manager.type'] = 'Manager';
return $queryData;
}
// Ensure the Type is set to Manager before saving this record
function beforeSave() {
$this->data['Manager']['type'] = 'Manager';
return true;
}
}
?>
The same would apply to the tenants model. This works like a charm. It helps to provide excellent separation between user types without writing a lot of extra code to manage and check for the differences in user types.
Happy coding!
I have had some discussions with a project manager about how we use technology and the decision making process behind it. During one such discussion I raised issues with the choice of technologies for the development of some tools we were developing. The debate came to an abrupt end when he said, “The customer is always right.” This got me thinking. Is that true? Should it be that way? Read more
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